We provide new empirical evidence concerning the contentious debate over the use of historical cost (HCA) versus mark-to-market (MTM) accounting in regulating financial institutions. These accounting rules, through their interactions with capital regulations, alter financial institutions’...

Using life-history survey data from eleven European countries, we investigate whether childhood conditions, such as socioeconomic status, cognitive abilities and health problems influence portfolio choice and risk attitudes later in life. After controlling for the corresponding conditions in...

Recent market developments raise doubts regarding further spread of household stock market participation. We study, computationally and econometrically, net gains from access to stocks, and estimate the potentially changing role of their determinants across the distribution of such gains for US...

This paper estimates a lower bound to the foregone gains of incomplete portfolios, which are in turn a lower bound to the (unobserved) entry costs that could rationalize non-participation to financial markets. My estimates provide a heuristic test for the cost-based explanation of limited...

This paper studies effects of two classes of borrowing constraints, collateral- and income-based, on wealth accumulation, portfolio behavior and on precautionary motives. We examine the sensitivity of solutions to tightness of constraints, education level, and preference parameters. The models...

This paper provides a joint analysis of household stockholding participation, stock location among stockholding modes, and participation spillovers, using data from the US Survey of Consumer Finances. Our multivariate choice model matches observed participation rates, conditional and...

I use microdata from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe to study whether the cost of acquiring health information is an important determinant of the decision to buy private hospital health insurance for individuals aged 50+, in eight European countries. I first test whether,...

Despite the increasing integration of capital markets, geography has not yet become irrelevant to finance. Between 1986 and 1997, European public companies have increasingly listed abroad, especially in the U.S. We relate the cross-listing decisions to the characteristics of the destination...

The life-cycle hypothesis posits that saving is positive for young households and negative for the retired, so that wealth should be hump-shaped. Yet, if one looks at the microeconomic evidence on saving by age, dissaving by the elderly is limited or absent. But the saving measures usually...

We use data from the 2009 Internet Survey of the Health and Retirement Study to examine the consumption impact of wealth shocks and unemployment during the Great Recession in the US. We find that many households experienced large capital losses in housing and in their financial portfolios, and...